Benchmark: Advice you can bank

Souqalmal.com’s CEO Ambareen Musa interviews with Benchmark Middle East. Would you rather pay 26 percent interest on a personal loan-or just 4 percent? It sounds like a no-brainier – but finding banking bargains among the UAEs myriad financial products wasn’t always easy. That is what inspired Ambareen Musa to found Souqalmal.com in 2012. The site […]

Would you rather pay 26 percent interest on a personal loan-or just 4 percent? It sounds like a no-brainier – but finding banking bargains among the UAEs myriad financial products wasn’t always easy. That is what inspired Ambareen Musa to found Souqalmal.com in 2012. The site compares 2,800 products in categories ranging from current accounts to credit cards.

At the time of writing it is showing one personal loan, with United Arab Bank, with a reducing interest rate of 3.99 percent – while another lender is charging a whopping 26 percent. Ms Musa told Benchmark about how shopping around can save you serious money – and her broader mission to improve financial literacy in the region.